Monday, January 30, 2017

I really liked John Hurt. He was so convincing as Winston
Smith getting tortured inside the Ministry of Love in 1984, I was always surprised to see him alive and looking okay
afterwards.

photo by Georges Seguin

It kind of shows my taste in movies that I remember him from
1984, and as the guy who had an alien
implanted on his face in Alien, and
as the Viking king in Outlander (the
science fiction version of Beowulf).

I know he played Caligula in I, Claudius, but I can't really think of him as playing that role,
though I vividly remember a number of the Caligula scenes. As an odd twist, my
mother said she recognized him in Alien
from his body, not his face, because she had seen him doing his odd dance in I, Claudius

Wednesday, January 25, 2017

In late August, I sent my vampire parody to a major agent I
had pitched to at a writers conference. That was the Pacific Northwest Writers
Conference in July, which I described here. Although the word was that the
market was too saturated with vampire submissions, one agent thought it was
intriguing.

Then in November, I sent it to a major science
fiction/fantasy publishing house. Why did I wait so long? Probably because I
was transitioning between jobs.

During the conference, Andrea Hurst, a major agent, was very
generous in giving free advice. She recommended the book Self-Editing for Fiction Writers.

This was the most helpful work I’ve read in a long time. I thought
that internal dialog was one of my strengths. This consists of a character
thinking to herself, denoted by italics. I had my main character Dee do this
while contemplating a neighbor’s lamp:

. . . and admired
the two-headed floor lamp in the corner with orange and white panels. Practical for reading to the kids. She didn’t
think Hope would mind if she reached back to turn—

But much of the time, this can be part of the narrative. It
actually has a stronger feel to it when done this way:

. . . and admired
the two-headed floor lamp in the corner with orange and white panels. Practical
for reading to the kids. She didn’t think Hope would mind if she reached back
to turn—

Of course, sometimes internal
dialog is so idiomatic, it should just stay as internal dialog, as when Dee’s younger sister discovers an
important file:

“Alchemical Source
of Vampires.” The holy grail. I’m so
good, I don’t know what to do with myself.

An unrelated but similar-looking correction from Self-Editing is the overuse of
italicized words to indicate which words are stressed in a sentence. I can’t
find an example from my old writing too quickly, though books with that minor
problem do get published, as my previous post indicated.

And sometimes it is necessary to italicize a word, as when Dee’s older sister tells her during an online chat that something is behind her.

It
was some thing, heading away from or
towards . . . the kids.

So I’ve
thoroughly gone through my science fiction manuscript Alpha Shift and my science fiction/fantasy take on the The War of
the Worlds and made a number of corrections. Now I’m going to do the same for a
historical fantasy that I’ve never posted excerpts for yet. Stay
tuned.

Saturday, January 21, 2017

Kat Falcone is only twenty-nine but looks nineteen thanks to
her flawless genes, and she is suddenly promoted to captain of a heavy cruiser
in her Commonwealth of worlds. Although she was a capable officer, thirty
others more senior than her should have been considered for this command. She
was given it because her extremely wealthy and politically powerful father
pulled strings for her.

Though infuriated at being given special treatment, Kat’s
father informs her she is to investigate Cadiz—their farthest world. A rival
power is obviously preparing for war, refugees have streamed into their
Commonwealth, raider attacks on their civilian ships have increased, and the
admiral in charge of Cadiz might not be up to the task of defending them. Kat
must go there and report back.

She boards her ship and meets her executive officer, who is
in his sixties and has gray hair at the temples. He thinks she looks like a
child.

With The Oncoming
Storm, Christopher Nuttall has established a fresh voice in military
science fiction. Instead of detailing the workings of military equipment or all
the ratings and sub-ratings of the non-commissioned, he realistically describes
the thoughts and emotions of two people put in impossible positions: Kat, who
knows that everyone realizes how young and inexperienced she is, and William
her executive officer, who must do everything to support her while knowing he
is the most experienced officer on the ship.

The tension between the two is not as great as Nuttall led us
to expect from this setup, since Kat is incredibly competent and William is
dedicated to his duty. Also, Nuttall italicizes too many words for emphasis—often
the wrong word in a sentence, if you
know what I mean. But the tension is
high throughout the book as they take their dangerous journey to Cadiz and there
confront an unexpected situation when they arrive.

Saturday, January 7, 2017

If you read my previous post, you’ll know that a little girl
was talking to the Alexa feature of Amazon’s Echo Dot, and the next thing you
know it delivered four pounds of cookies and a huge, expensive dollhouse to her
home.

And here’s the cascade effect: A number of other people who
left their Echo Dot on while watching this story on TV have said that Amazon
delivered dollhouses to them. This
will become another news story, and on and on. Eventually, the North American
continent will sink under the weight of the dollhouses.

public domain dollhouse by Thomas Quine

Echo Dot is voice-activated. How does this work? Well, in
order to voice activate it, the thing has to always be listening to you: in the
living room, bathroom, bedroom, etc. Um, are you really comfortable with that?

You can imagine what will happen if people add other
listening devices to their homes. Men will have to stop any women from wishing
out loud for diamonds. (Wait, I just discovered Amazon delivers jewelry. “Honey,
I ordered that on accident.”) Of if you have security listening devices
installed, you could be watching a gunfight on TV where someone cries for help,
and the next thing you know a SWAT team will show up.

Wednesday, January 4, 2017

A six-year-old girl in Texas was delighted when the family
received an Echo Dot for a holiday gift. It features Alexa, the digital assistant
that answers questions and handles calendars, etc. The girl asked Alexa
questions about cookies and a dollhouse.

The next thing you know, Amazon delivered four pounds of
cookies and a $170 dollhouse. Alexa had interpreted the conversation as an
order.

All this goes to show the danger of voice commands. It also
serves as a segue to an excerpt from my latest science fiction manuscript, Alpha Shift.

photo by Constantin Barbu

“Emergency shutdown of docking.” Akajima spoke slowly and
clearly into the arm of his chair. The ship’s systems were mostly not operated
by voice commands, since past experience had shown that an officer lecturing
his crew on how to fire weapons could have disastrous results.

But officers could still speak certain emergency measures
into life.

A watch stander jerked his head at a monitor. “Shutdown
confirmed.”

Akajima knew that in that distant part of the ship a sheet
of metal as thick as the hull had rammed down at great speed in front of the
airlock, sealing off the ship from its connection with the shuttle. It didn’t
matter if the armor detected by the scan was armored crewmen coming out of the
cylinder into the main part of the shuttle in order to board the Panama, or an armored crawler meant to
speed its way through the passageways. They were denied.

His next words were addressed to the appropriate crew around
him. “Action Stations Yellow. All off-duty personnel confined to their berthing
compartments.”

Flashing amber lights and a shrill alarm assaulted the
senses—not just any alarm, but discordant high notes mixed with simulated baby
screams that threatened to crack the brain case of all who heard. Some off-duty
crew had been known to sleep through fistfights in their berthing compartments,
but this combination of nightmare sounds would jolt them off the bunks.